EU-Chinese trade relations are disappointingly stagnant. This column proposes a new European strategy for China, suggesting a small, feasible bargain to jump-start economic engagement with the emerging giant.

Europe is moving towards immigration policies that favour the acceptance of highly skilled applicants. This column summarises research showing that such policies may have some effect but cautions that there are limits to the power of selectivity.

Many African economies recently signed economic partnership agreements with the European Union. This commentary analyses the agreements and identifies some significant challenges for future Africa-EU trade relations.

The EU has adopted a new approach to completing the Single Market. Choice of policy measures are not made ex-ante, but rather ex-post, following a period of market monitoring and analysis. Here are some of the new market-monitoring tools to be used.

Europe’s capital markets are far from integrated. Here is some very innovative research that combines financial integration measures with ‘social capital’. It turns out that the market fragmentation stems in a large part from a lack of trust and confidence in certain regions and nations – things that the EU cannot directly affect.

The era when the EU focused on internal integration, leaving its external policy to be a by-product of internal dynamics, is over. In today’s fast-changing and challenging international environment, external economic relations have become too central an issue to the EU for it to remain a fragmented power. This column introduces a series of columns discussing how Europe might boost its influence in the world of economic policy-making.

The EU must finalise trade deals with developing nations by January 2008. Problems abound and EU special interest politics threaten to stand in the way of an outcome supportive to African development needs.

Public debate on the new treaty focuses on marketing issues (re-packing) or extreme generalities (mini-treaty), but there are important choices to be made, and the various reform elements – such as voting rules, the number of Commissioners and removal of the famous Maastricht pillars – interact in complex ways. First in a series of 4 columns on the issue.